Related: The Valley of Bad X. Learning new skills is especially hard in domains in which your first few attempts are likely to fall far short of your mental picture of improvement or even make you worse initially. I find it helps to explicitly visualize people who I perceive as being skilled in X failing at it over and over again when they were first learning. Rather than think of myself as wanting to affiliate with the end result I think of myself as wanting to affiliate with the process.
Also related: Punctuated equilibrium skill growth vs linear skill growth (ht Ethan Dickinson). You will be especially discouraged if you are expecting linear growth and instead get lumpy growth.
It helps to explicitly visualize people who I perceive as being skilled in X failing at it over and over again
Some of the greatest value I’ve gotten out of attending math lectures comes from seeing math Ph.Ds (particularly good ones) make mistakes or even forget exactly how a proof works and have to dismiss class early. It never happened often, but just often enough to keep me from getting discouraged.
I concur with the need to focus on the process instead of the end-goal. Just to add on: I realised one day that my main mentors made their success look too easy, and were thus unrelatable. I then found a mentor who made his arduous years to success a theme that he regularly discussed, and naturally I found him more relatable and thus found myself learning more from him.
Also, having low expectations always helps me grow. Guy Spier gave advice to ask yourself “Am I closer to my goal today than I was yesterday?” And if the answer is ‘yes’ (however minuscule) then you should consider it progress. This allows me to incrementally grow and move towards my goals, which means that in the long-term I get the results I want (yay) instead of the common high-expectations-no-results route.
I concur with the need to focus on the process instead of the end-goal. Just to add on: I realised one day that my main mentors made their success look too easy, and were thus unrelatable. I then found a mentor who made his arduous years to success a theme that he regularly discussed, and naturally I found him more relatable and thus found myself learning more from him.
Also, having low expectations always helps me grow. Guy Spier gave advice to ask yourself “Am I closer to my goal today than I was yesterday?” And if the answer is ‘yes’ (however minuscule) then you should consider it progress. This allows me to incrementally grow and move towards my goals, which means that in the long-term I get the results I want (yay) instead of the common high-expectations-no-results route.
Related: The Valley of Bad X. Learning new skills is especially hard in domains in which your first few attempts are likely to fall far short of your mental picture of improvement or even make you worse initially. I find it helps to explicitly visualize people who I perceive as being skilled in X failing at it over and over again when they were first learning. Rather than think of myself as wanting to affiliate with the end result I think of myself as wanting to affiliate with the process.
Also related: Punctuated equilibrium skill growth vs linear skill growth (ht Ethan Dickinson). You will be especially discouraged if you are expecting linear growth and instead get lumpy growth.
Some of the greatest value I’ve gotten out of attending math lectures comes from seeing math Ph.Ds (particularly good ones) make mistakes or even forget exactly how a proof works and have to dismiss class early. It never happened often, but just often enough to keep me from getting discouraged.
Related: The Dip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dip)
I concur with the need to focus on the process instead of the end-goal. Just to add on: I realised one day that my main mentors made their success look too easy, and were thus unrelatable. I then found a mentor who made his arduous years to success a theme that he regularly discussed, and naturally I found him more relatable and thus found myself learning more from him.
Also, having low expectations always helps me grow. Guy Spier gave advice to ask yourself “Am I closer to my goal today than I was yesterday?” And if the answer is ‘yes’ (however minuscule) then you should consider it progress. This allows me to incrementally grow and move towards my goals, which means that in the long-term I get the results I want (yay) instead of the common high-expectations-no-results route.
I concur with the need to focus on the process instead of the end-goal. Just to add on: I realised one day that my main mentors made their success look too easy, and were thus unrelatable. I then found a mentor who made his arduous years to success a theme that he regularly discussed, and naturally I found him more relatable and thus found myself learning more from him.
Also, having low expectations always helps me grow. Guy Spier gave advice to ask yourself “Am I closer to my goal today than I was yesterday?” And if the answer is ‘yes’ (however minuscule) then you should consider it progress. This allows me to incrementally grow and move towards my goals, which means that in the long-term I get the results I want (yay) instead of the common high-expectations-no-results route.